Ben Carson says Mahmoud Abbas, Ali Khamenei, Vladimir Putin knew each other in 1968

[GMDino]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/09/ben-carson/ben-carson-says-mahmoud-abbas-ali-khamenei-vladimi/

Quote:It sounds like the opening to a joke: A young Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk into a Soviet-era Moscow university …

But it’s a claim that was made with a straight face by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson -- on national television, three times.

First, on the Oct. 5, 2015, edition of the Fox News show Hannity, Carson said Putin’s "relationships go way, way, way, way back, you know? 1968 at Patrice Lumumba University -- that's when Putin first got to know the Ali Khamenei, and also Mahmoud Abbas."

Then, on Oct. 8, Carson said much the same thing to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

Putin "already has substantial ties in the Middle East," Carson said. "In the class of 1968 at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, Mahmoud Abbas was one of the members of that class, and so was Ali Khamenei. And that's where they first established relationships with the young Vladimir Putin."

And then again to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC on Oct. 9: Putin "has longstanding relationships with people in that area. In the class of 1968 at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, Mahmoud Abbas was in that class, and so was Ali Khamenei. And that was when they first became familiar with Putin."

Really? Three future world leaders -- and three people many Americans consider adversaries -- found themselves kicking around a university in Moscow in 1968, building ties that would serve them decades later? We had to check it out.

When we asked Carson’s staff whether they had any supporting evidence, aide Ying Ma wrote back, "Thanks for your inquiry. We are not in the habit of providing Googling support to the media. If there is a specific aspect of Dr. Carson's statement that you wish to challenge, please let us know and we can go from there."

We did have difficulty finding any support for the claim, and we forwarded what we found to the campaign but did not hear back.

...

The closest we came to any of this making sense was an interview with Cliff Kincaid, who runs a group called America’s Survival, Inc. Kincaid published a paper titled, "Communists and Muslims: The Hidden Hand of the KGB" that raises many of these claims.

Kincaid made the case that Carson was saying Abbas and Khamenei could have been agents of the KGB, and if they were, Putin, who rose to colonel in the KGB, would have known them.

"Carson was clearly saying that Putin, as a former KGB colonel and later head of the FSB, the new name for the KGB, would have knowledge of Abbas and Khamenei attending Patrice Lumumba University, a KGB-controlled institution," Kincaid told PolitiFact. "That made them subject to KGB influence, if not KGB agents. Whether Putin personally met them in his younger years is beside the point. … Please report these facts rather than nitpick Carson on the ages of the various players."

We hereby report those "facts." Still, this isn’t what Carson said.

Our ruling

Carson said, "In the class of 1968 at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, Mahmoud Abbas was one of the members of that class, and so was Ali Khamenei. And that's where they first established relationships with the young Vladimir Putin."

This is one of the more bizarre claims we’ve heard so far in the 2016 presidential campaign, and that’s saying something.

Abbas may have attended the university, though we don’t know for sure, or when. No credible evidence has yet surfaced to place Khamenei as a student in the Soviet Union -- ever, much less in close proximity to Abbas, or in 1968. And Putin would have been a teenager in 1968, attending school 450 miles away.

The idea that the three men developed lifelong ties as students in the late-1960s-era Soviet Union is ridiculous. Pants on Fire!